This week was a pretty good practise week for me. I got in 2 games and learnt a lot from my lists about what I need, and what units can do what. My list was a bit of a mix of the 2 lists I posted last time. It looked like this:
Alpha Legion Battalion
Lord with jump pack
Sorcerer
3 units of 10 cultists
5 Chosen with combi-bolters in a Rhino
2 units of Raptors with plasma
Leviathan Dread with dual Butcher cannon arrays
Scorpius
Death Guard Battalion
Chaos Lord
Daemon Prince - Warlord Arch Contaminator - Supporating Plate
20 cultists
20 Poxwalkers
10 Poxwalkers
2 Drones with Fleshmowers
My first game was against Sean who brought Thousand Sons backed up by a Chaos Knight. He had Magnus, Arhiman, 2 Sorcerers, 2 Princes(one was warlord with DMC), a Defiler, 3 units of 10 cultists, and the Knight with dual Battlecannons.
Super Character heavy with a metric shit ton of psychic powers, but my opponent didn't quite play this list right. He had 2 main problems with his overall use of the list which was; he cast way too many buff spells and not nearly enough damage dealing spells, and he Warptimed Magnus up to assault some cultists and Poxwalkers. The fact he pushed Magnus so far forward meant I could pick and choose what would shoot and charge him. I even managed to get off Death Hex on him and after turn 1 Magnus was down to 5 wounds and he had to run him away and Warptime him so I couldn't catch him and just charge him again. I was able to pick off a couple more wounds with the Raptors that dropped in and finished him with a Daemon Shell from the JP Lord who came in with the Raptors.
I was basically able to ignore the Knight because Sean walked him along the table edge and out of his deployment zone. It focused most of his firepower on the Leviathan who didn't really care that much. Sean should have either been far more aggressive with the Knight, or left him in his own deployment zone so I couldn't simply walk in and take over. The Leviathan killed the Defiler in a couple rounds of shooting and once it was dead there was nothing protecting any of his characters, who moved up to buff the Princes and Magnus, so the Leviathan and Scorpius had a turkey shoot picking off characters.
By the end of turn 4 all he had left was the Knight so we talked through the rest of the game which would have ended around 25 - 15, depending on certain things.
My second game went about the exact opposite as the first as I played Donny who had 3 Knights, 4 Basilisks, 2 Company commanders, and 5 Infantry squads. He of course had the Relic of Lost Cadia, to which a bunch of guys near by made the joke it wasn't lost, every one uses it all the time. I made a couple of mistakes in this game, but the biggest one I made was to not use the prepared positions stratagem when he got the first turn. It completely slipped my mind and as a result he was able to take out the Leviathan and take one Drone down to half wounds. Surprisingly that's all he did, but my saves were pretty good and Donny is notoriously bad at rolling dice.
As we were playing Hammer and Anvil, I was going to have to suffer at least one more round of shooting even though he was moving his knights up as he did so. This second round took out the 2 Drones and the Rhino who had popped smoke and was hoping to distract one of knights for a little longer than it did.
My second mistake was to ToT the Cultists into my opponent's deployment zone. I had them move block one of the Knights, who charged them and killed a bunch, then I used ToT and I should have just moved them back right in front of the knight and move blocked him again as it was right at the edge of the table. Instead I moved them to the edge of the "castle" Donny created with the hopes of making the charge and getting stuck in. It didn't work.
My third mistake was choosing my secondary missions. I chose Titan slayer, which was obvious, and Behind enemy lines, which I scored a couple points thanks to the Raptors. However, I chose Marked for Death and selected the 4 Basilisks with the understanding that "I'll have to try to kill them anyway to win the game." Of course that was foolish of me because I would have to kill the Infantry units that were bubble wrapping them in order to get to the tanks and the infantry units are much easier to kill.
Having said all that, my primary points were not that terrible in the first couple turns. I had 3 objectives in my deployment and moved out to grab the centre one so for turn 1 and 2 I was scoring 3 points. Once Donny got rid of my big units though he was able to pick up a ton of kills and pull ahead in every way.
For some changes in the next iteration of my list I'll be going with 2 units of 10 cultists and one unit of 30 in the Alpha Legion detachment. This will give me a little more bang for my buck when I use ToT and get more shooting out of them. Making a successful charge from "deep strike" is difficult, on turn 2 I failed 4 out of 5 9" charges, and the ones that I failed were so bad that a command point re-roll would not have helped. I need to mitigate the odds of failing that charge, on the turns that I need to make that charge. I'm thinking of possibly dropping one of the units of Raptors in order to make the other unit bigger and giving it the MoK and the Banner of Wrath so it can re-roll charges. Another option is to drop the Raptors and take a Daemon Detachment with a unit of Bloodletters with the magic banner of charge 3D6" and nearby Herald for re-rolls. This will also give me access to the Khorne Daemon Prince with his super angry axe. I will likely have to drop the Death Guard detachment to make room for this which means I will likely have some points to play with.
Til next time, keep them dice rollin.
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